Ferris Bueller is NOT the Figment of Anyone’s Imagination

From left to right: Cameron, Sloane and Ferris Bueller in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Photo courtesy of the Starpulse Web site.

Say hello to my invisible friend …

A writer for the Televisualist column, which looks at what’s on TV, claims that Ferris Bueller is someone the Cameron character just made up.

POSIT: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is actually a movie about Cameron. (This much is obvious: Cameron has the dramatic arc and the character development in the movie. Ferris is just Ferris all the way through.) FURTHER POSIT: Ferris Bueller does not, as such, exist; the movie is actually about Cameron’s day off and his unresolved crush on his best friend Sloane, and the parts where Cameron is not onscreen are merely the products of his imagination as Ferris, the perfect human being, does all the things Cameron could not or never do, until Cameron finally snaps and decides to live his life for himself.

Who is he to talk about an iconic character that way? Apparently, it’s not a new theory. Cinematical.com reports that the “Ferris Bueller Fight Club Theory” been going around for a while – even before the swine flu hit, if you can remember the time.

Christopher Bird, the Televisualist writer, almost had me when he mentions that “Ferris, the perfect human being, does all the things Cameron could not or never do.” We can all relate to that, but Bird reeks of an English teacher who thinks every line Shakespeare wrote has meaning.